The World Health Organization (WHO) has notified a rabies immunisation protocol developed by Omesh Bharti, 49, a government doctor in Himachal Pradesh, as the new global standard. The procedure, successfully tested on thousands of dog and monkey bite victims in the past five years, brings down the cost of treatment from Rs 35,000 to Rs 350 per patient!

The existing treatment involved injecting patients with the rabies vaccine and rabies immunoglobulin (RIG) extracted from horse or human blood. Human RIG, which needed to be administered in large doses as per the victim’s body weight, cost Rs 6,000-8,000 per vial, and was “beyond the reach of most victims”. Working at the time (2013-2015) as a health officer with the Shimla Municipal Corporation, Bharti had rare access to brain tissue samples from rabid dogs, monkeys and Himalayan palm civets found dead in the area. He evolved a protocol that required a fraction of the RIG needed for conventional treatment. “A tiny amount of RIG injected directly into the wound was just as effective as administering large amounts,” he says. Similarly, administering ‘intra-dermally’ rather than as an ‘intra-muscular’ injection required less than a 10th of the vaccine. Despite early scepticism, the meeting of WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) in Bangkok in 2016, included Bharti’s protocol in its agenda for discussion. “By then, we had 7,000 successful cases in Himachal,” he says.

It helped that Himachal health authorities avidly supported Bharti’s work. Even before WHO’s endorsement, Bharti has trained scores of local medical professionals deployed at myriad state-run rabies clinics across the state. Himachal has now made rabies treatment (using RIG) free.

“In 2017, there were just two rabies-related deaths [in HP]-one a woman who refused treatment; the other a youth who went to a private practitioner,” says Bharti. His work could help stem substantially the 55,000 rabies deaths a year reported worldwide, the majority in Asia and Africa.

Finally endorsed by the SAGE in Geneva on January 15 as “cost-, dose- and time-sparing, while assuring safety and clinical effectiveness”, the updated WHO recommendations on rabies immunisation supersed

New modelling by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) finds the Indian state of Tamil Nadu capable of doubling its wind energy capacity by 2027 and increasing its solar capacity six-fold.

“The upshot is cheaper electricity for customers and a return to profitability for TANGEDCO (Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation),” said Tim Buckley, IEEFA’s director of energy finance studies, Australasia, and lead author of the report.

“IEEFA bases its forecast on a clear tipping point achieved in 2017: new renewable investments are being underwritten at tariffs of Rs2.43-3.00/kilowatt-hour (kWh), below the average tariff paid to NTPC, India’s largely central government-owned power generator, for thermal power in 2016/17 of Rs3.20/kWh,” Buckley said.

Buckley noted that Tamil Nadu accounted for almost one-fifth (18.5%) of India’s total renewable energy generation in 2016/17. Tamil Nadu’s population is approaching 72 million; India’s total population is 1.3 billion.

The report finds that Tamil Nadu already operates the most diversified electricity generation fleet in India, with renewables representing 35% of installed capacity as of March 2017, nuclear 8%, and hydroelectricity 7%. Coal-fired power capacity represents 45% or 13.4 GW.

The report sounds a warning, however, on how Tamil Nadu is building 22,500 MW of expensive coal-fired power plants—almost double the entire existing coal-fired fleet in the state—in spite of the favorable investment advantages and lower tariff costs for wind and solar.

“Building more non-pithead coal-based plants at a time when existing plants are being used only 62% of the time as opposed to the optimal 80% makes no sense,” Buckley said.

“This will be borne out in time with the cancellation of many new, costly coal-based plant proposals such as the 4,000 MW Cheyyur UMPP.”

The report concludes that Tamil Nadu would be better served by a more diversified electricity-generation mix, which is well within reach if certain sensible policy and investment programs are pursued aggressively.

Low-cost solar capital expansions.

A major repowering of Tamil Nadu’s wind projects.

A concerted improvement in energy efficiency initiatives combined with a crackdown on reduced transmission and distribution (T&D) losses.

“Such a program would allow Tamil Nadu’s power utility to turn profitable without undue impacts on consumers,” Buckley said.

“Despite being a world leader in wind energy, Tamil Nadu’s wind farms have aging and outdated technology. Just upgrading or repowering existing turbines could double the state’s wind-energy capacity.”

Investments in new coal and nuclear based projects could cause further financial distress to the firms involved.

Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation Limited (TANGEDCO) reported a staggering loss of Rs 13,985 crore (US$2.1bn) in 2013/14. Subsequent reforms under UDAY scheme have helped TANGEDCO not only reduce its losses, to 3,783 crore (US$582m) in 2016/17, but lower is deficit on energy availability from 12.3% in 2011/12 to a record low 0.6% in 2015/16. IEEFA expects a break-even result next financial year and expects TANGEDCO to move to net profit for the first time in two decades.

The call campaign started by members of the Aarey Conservation Group (ACG) and Jhatkaa.org has brought the Aarey controversy to the foreground yet again. The petition garnered support from around 2.6 lakh citizens from across India. It was followed up by a targeted call campaign to the Chief Minister’s office, Suburban Collector and MMRCL’s Managing Director in an attempt to halt their plans to build a Metro Car Depot in Aarey. The campaign has prompted Ms Ashwini Bhide, Managing Director of MMRCL to file a police complaint against the crusaders. Yash Marwah, one of the volunteers with the group says, “Over 2.6 lakh people have raised their voice through our petition now, in the past this has kept happening via different events and the authorities always find a way to divert our attention. We only want a public meeting with the CM and MD. Nothing else.”

The Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Limited (MMRCL) and citizen organizations have been fighting over the location of the Metro III car shed since the past three years now. The Metro III project is slated to connect Bandra, Seepz and Colaba in western Mumbai with a car depot proposed within the Aarey Milk Colony.

The 1200 Ha Aarey Milk Colony is a biodiversity hub and a catchment area for the Mithi River that flows through the city of Mumbai. The ACG has been asserting that a functioning car depot is bio hazardous in nature and under no circumstances should such an industry be allowed to function within an ecologically sensitive zone like Aarey. The operation of a car shed within Aarey will cause irreversible damage to its ecology and therefore the decision to construct it within Aarey must be reconsidered.

Amrita Bhattacharjee, an ACG group member says, “MMRCL wants to build a Car shed on a Forest land in Aarey which not only has dense tree cover but is also the floodplain of the Mithi River. In a coastal city like Mumbai; floodplains, forest land and wetlands are very critical areas for the city as during heavy monsoon these areas become the holding areas for excess water that the city’s drainage system cannot manage during High tide hours. Global Warming will increase the spells of heavy rains and over concretized Mumbai city is not prepared to handle such situations.”

Expert Committee and the Kanjur Marg Alternative

After protests by campaigners in 2015, the BJP led state government set up an expert committee to look into the viability of Aarey and provide alternatives, if available. The team considered nine options for the car depot, namely; Backbay Reclamation, Colaba; Mumbai Port Trust; Mahalaxmi Race course; Dharavi; Bandra Kurla Complex; Mumbai University, Kalina; Aarey Colony; Sariput Nagar and Kanjur Marg. After deliberations, it was recommended that the car shed be moved to Kanjur Marg. Kanjur Marg is an abandoned salt pan and has not received any tide water since fifteen years. Aarey on the other hand, the environmental experts of the committee opined, is much desirable for its ‘ecological endowment’ and must be protected at all costs. They have also opined that irrespective of escalated project costs and possible delays in project completion timelines, the alternate sites must be seriously considered. One of the other reasons for suggesting Kanjur Marg as an alternative was that the Metro VI (Jogeshwari-Kanjurmarg) car depot had been proposed at the same land parcel. The metro III line may be extended to Kanjurmarg and the two lines can share the same car depots while providing the benefit of extended connectivity to central railway.

This recommendation of the expert committee was accepted by the government and it was agreed upon that the car shed be moved to Kanjurmarg. However, the ongoing ownership dispute between the Government of Maharashtra, Salt Commissioner and private owners regarding part of this land parcel has halted the plans. Following the recommendations of the expert committee, the government had filed an application in the High Court to get the land cleared for the Metro III car depot. However, from December 2015 when the application was initially filed till date, the dispute has remained unaddressed in the court. The government has not pursued the matter since. In April 2016, the government issued a statement saying that since the Kanjurmarg land has been made unavailable, they have no other option but to construct the depot in Aarey.

MMRCL has since barricaded the 30 Ha plot within Aarey and commenced land filling activity there. Ms Ashwini Bhide, Managing Director at MMRCL has stated that the, “Government of Maharashtra through its Cabinet decision approved Mumbai Metro III and the car depot at Aarey in March 2014. Considering the concerns raised by citizens the state government again reviewed all alternative sites for car depot including Kanjurmarg in 2015 and after studying the pros and cons of each of the option confirmed its decision to have car depot at Aarey in December 2016. Post addressing all the apprehensions of the citizens and receiving all the required approvals MMRC has started construction activity of car depot at Aarey.”

However, ACG members do not agree with this assessment. They say that MMRCL has not been forthcoming with supporting documentation and the alternate site inspection reports, if carried out, have not as yet been furnished by MMRCL.

Stalin Dayanand, Director at the Environmental NGO Vanashakti says, “MMRCL had no permissions in place before they started work. Some permissions were obtained post facto and some were circumvented through mis-interpretation and subversion of court orders. The project report of MMRCL itself lists out the number of permissions needed and less than half of them have been obtained. At no point was any effort made to engage with experts or citizens to resolve inherent flaws in the project. There is not even a single document that shows that alternate sites were seriously considered for the Metro car shed.”

Given the high number of cases that are pending at the High Court, the Kanjurmarg matter may not be heard by the court for a very long time. However, the ACG members feel that getting the land parcel at Karjurmarg cleared for construction is a matter of pursuing the High Court and urging it to hear the case on an urgent basis. They are arguing that the fact that the government has not approached the court even once after the initial application was filed means that the entire affair of forming the expert committee was nothing more than a pacifying act on the part of the government and that there never really was any intention of moving the car shed out of Aarey. “The aforementioned Kanjurmarg land has already been allotted for Metro VI car shed but the MMRCL has been claiming that the same land is not available for Metro III. If the Kanjurmarg Land is under dispute and is technically unfeasible for the Metro III car shed, then how is it feasible for Metro VI?” asks Amrita Bhattacharjee.

Claims of Possible Commercial Exploitation of Aarey Land

ACG members have alleged that the MMRCL’s unwillingness to pursue the Kanjur Marg option and their insistence on constructing the car shed at Aarey is because it affords them possibilities for commercial exploitation of Aarey land in the future. Real Estate development within Aarey near the car shed site would provide a means to raise funding for the expensive Metro III project. Ms Ashwini Bhide explains the project funding, “The entire cost of project i.e 23,136 crores of which 57.2% is being provided by Japan International Co-operation Agency(JICA) as soft loan and balance funding will be made available by Government of India and Government of Maharashtra in the form of equity and subordinate debt.”

However, ACG has brought forward documents where plans to develop real estate within Aarey have been mentioned. An Urban Development Department (UDD) GR dtd 3.3.2014 states that the Government has approved to transfer the land adjoining the Aarey Milk Colony Jogeshwari- Vikroli Link Road to MMRDA for residential/commercial development with a view to raise Funds for the Project. Ms Bhide has not provided clarifications about whether or not these claims are true and has not responded to the query of whether or not MMRCL plans to develop real estate in Aarey.

Presently, petitioners are pursuing the case in the High Court and the National Green Tribunal. Zoru Bhathena, an ACG member and one of the petitioners himself informs, “There is delay in the case since the Kanjurmarg case file which includes the application filed by the government has gone missing and the High Court is currently trying to locate it.”

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Buried in The Finance Bill, 2018 (soon to become law) are the following words:

Clause 217 of the Bill seeks to amend section 236 of the Finance Act, 2016 which relates to amendment to sub-clause (vi) of clause (j) of sub-section (1) of section 2 of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010.

It is proposed to bring the said amendment with effect from the 5th August, 1976 the date of commencement of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 1976, which was repealed and re-enacted as the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010.

Written in legalese, the words either sound boring or harmless to a layman. Let us break it down and unwrap the shroud of secrecy placed by the government to save its own skin and that of the Congress.

Guilty as charged

Based on the petition filed by Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), Delhi High Court in 2014 had indicted the BJP and the Congress for receiving foreign funds in violation of the provisions of The Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA), 2010 (and The Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA), 1976).

The Act prohibited political parties, candidates for elections, government servant or employees from accepting funds from “foreign source”, defined as a company with “more than one-half of the nominal value of its share capital held” by “corporations incorporated in a foreign country or territory”. In simpler words, any company with a foreign investment of above 50%.

However, both the BJP and the Congress received funds from London-based mining company Vedanta.

On March 28, 2014, a Delhi HC judgement found both parties guilty of violating provisions of the FCRA and ordered the government and the Election Commission to act against them. That same day, both the parties unitedly moved the Supreme Court against the HC’s decision.

If you can’t change the law, then ‘change’ the law

In the backdrop of clamping down on legally valid NGOs for violating FCRA and then cancelling their licenses, the BJP government slipped in an unnoticed clause in The Finance Bill, 2016, with obviously no opposition from the Congress.

Under the new provision, so long as the foreign company’s ownership of an Indian entity is within the foreign investment limits prescribed by the government for that sector, the company will be treated as “Indian” for the purposes of the FCRA.

The amendment was made retrospective from 2010. Meaning, donations received from foreign companies before 2010 were not covered under the new clause.

Ironically, the Vedanta donation was received prior to 2010 so the amendment did little good for taking the BJP and the Congress completely off the hook.

Enmity (or friendship?) of convenience

In favour of both itself and the Congress, the ruling party slipped in another hitherto unnoticed clause, this time in The Finance Bill, 2018.

To legalise “illegal” donations received before 2010, the BJP decided to go back further…by 40 years.

The government plans to amend the clause inserted in 2016 so that it covers the period beginning August 5, 1976.

Whether the government can make amendments in a law that no longer exists is a matter of contention to be debated upon by legal experts.

However, The Wirereports, there are at least 25 instances of the BJP and the Congress receiving funding from “Indian subsidiaries” of several foreign companies before 2010, in the range of Rs 5 lakh to Rs 5 crore. Donors include Vedanta, Dow Chemicals and Switzerland-based Mundipharma.

The amendment, apart from saving the skin of both the BJP and the Congress, opens up a floodgate of donations from foreign companies to Indian political parties. The nature of political funding in India from the corporate sector already raises eyebrows. The government had earlier removed cap on political donations and introduced the shady scheme of electoral bonds.

The current state of Indian democracy is a puppet in the hands of the BJP which hardly has any Opposition to keep it in check. Parliamentary sessions in India are more like screaming matches than our elected representatives actually debating on legislation crucial to the growth of the nation. It is evident that the BJP and the Congress are more alike than what is commonly perceived.

Part of the problem in understanding how inadequate Aadhaar can be lies in the fact that most people cannot distinguish between authentication and identification.

RN Bhaskar

RN Bhaskar

Aadhaar, the world’s largest biometric identity scheme, is actually not capable of identifying anyone. It is merely an authentication scheme, and passports will continue to be needed as a foolproof means of identification.

This is the inescapable conclusion from the shocking response to an RTI query: the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has sidestepped the whole issue of whether Aadhaar identifies an individual.

As Anupam Saraph, IT expert who filed the RTI request, says, “We had asked the UIDAI to explain the difference between identification of an individual and authentication of biometric or demographic data. The UIDAI ïn its reply [in a rather confusing manner] has stated that authentication is defined under the Aadhaar (Enrolment and Update) Regulations, 2016 (1 of 2016) as the process by which the Aadhaar number along with demographic information or biometric information of an individual is submitted to the Central Identities Data Repository for its verification and such Repository verifies the correctness, or the lack thereof, on the basis of information available with it. This does not define identification.”

Part of the problem in understanding how inadequate Aadhaar can be lies in the fact that most people cannot distinguish between authentication and identification.

For instance, as Saraph explains, when you get an email from a person named X, it does not automatically mean that X has written the email. The user name and password may have been known to X’s secretary. It is possible that the email has been written by the secretary, and not by X himself. Similarly, when a hacker manages to get the username and password of X, he can send out messages in the name of X. The recipient may think that the email has come from X, but it has not. It has been sent by the hacker, who managed to get the email service provider authenticate the username and password, and granted him access to the service in X;s name. That is nothing but authentication.

On the other hand, when a passport is given, this is done after the police identifies the person. The police visits the homes of neighbours, and asks them if they know the individual concerned. The names and addresses of the ‘identifiers’ are noted down for purposes of record. Only after such a process has been satisfactorily completed does the police give its go-ahead. The applicant is then cleared for receiving the passport document.

The same thing happens when – conventionally — a person applies to a bank for opening a new account. The bank asks the person to provide two witnesses who can identify him. Only after the witnesses testify that they know the person, does the individual get a bank account. The names of the witnesses are preserved as records with the bank. The individual has then been identified, not authenticated.

In both cases of identification explained above, the witnesses who have identified the individual will be held responsible for promoting misrepresentation or fraud or worse, if it turns out that the individual is someone else and not the person he claimed to be.

That is the reason why bank accounts are considered reasonable proof of identify. Passports, in almost any country, are considered to be the highest level of proof. That is also the reason why the present government’s willingness to remove the address page was problematic for many. The passport provides proof of the person and his address.

The driving licence does this too, but it is given on the basis of documents. The person is not identified the way a bank account holder is conventionally identified. Ditto with PAN cards. Election cards, however, are given on the basis of identification, but by the enumerators visiting the homes of the persons concerned.

And that is the reason why when anyone says that the passport will gradually become irrelevant as proof of identity in India and that Aadhaar would be considered as the most important document, such claims are laughable. They are frighteningly worrisome as well. The passport process (and the election card process) actually identifies people. The Aadhaar process does not.

So what is the Aadhaar process? Well, to put it simply, the government of India appointed UIDAI (Unique Identification Authroity of India) without consulting the authorities in charge of the National Population Register (NPR) which is the final arbiter on citizenship. The UIDAI in turn appointed several agencies who in turn appointed other agencies looking after the Aadhaar enrolment programme. This author, for instance, went to a centre manned by a share registry firm called Karvy.

At each Aadhaar registration centre, there are people appointed only for the purpose of such registration work. They are usually temporary employees, with a limited job assigned to them. The process of identification, normally, should be done by people who are permanent employees – like bank officials or police personnel. It is difficult to track down temporary staff when the process of identification needs to be audited.

Unlike the election card, or a passport, where the photograph is quite clearly visible for facial recognition, many Aadhaar cards have the photograph as a dark blob, making visual comparison of the Aadhaar photograph with the face almost impossible. So one has to reply only on the Aadhaar number. It is this number which is then authenticated by the UIDAI’s central servers as belonging to a particular name. If the original applicant had submitted forged documents either in collusion with the temporary staff of the Aadhaar registration centre, or without the knowledge of the staff, the person will be “authenticated” not identified. Even a photograph comparison with the face is not possible. Nor is there the image of a signature that PAN cards have. The entire process hinges on a number, nothing more. And this is authenticated, not identified.

That raises the next question: Have frauds been discovered? The answer is yes. According to a statement made by Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on 10 April 2017 and widely reported in the media, as many as 34,000 Aadhaar registration agencies had been blacklisted. There is no indication as yet of how many people these agencies had already registered for their Aadhaar cards. Experts believe that assuming 50 people at each of these centres for 365 days a year, the numbers registered could easily exceed half a million.

Hence it is ironic that the Aadhaar card is being used for identification. “This revelation comes even as the Supreme Court is hearing over 22 PILs challenging the use of Aadhaar. The Aadhaar is being used widely by government and private parties for identification of individuals. The revelation that the UIDAI does not identify anyone comes as a shocker for processes that rely on the UIDAI for identification,” says Saraph.

“It is evident that the UIDAI distorts the legal meaning of identification and authorisation causing legal sanction to processes that have neither the consent nor the knowledge of authenticated individuals as they were never identified,” he adds.

Can this lead to huge financial frauds? Yes, indeed. But that will be discussed later. But an indication here should suffice. The government has allowed authentication through an Aadhaar card enough to get a SIM card, transfer property, transfer money and even open bank accounts. No longer will the bank manager be required to identify the proposed account holder. Suddenly, authentication is sought to become more important than identification.

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Shootouts and encounters are on a rise in Uttar Pradesh (UP) under the leadership of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath with the government portraying encounters as a badge of honour. Official data released by the State of Uttar Pradesh (UP) indicates that there have been 1142 police encounters since the time (10 months) the government came into power. The number of people killed in encounters is slightly less than half of those arrested (2744). Thirty-four ‘criminals’ have died in these shootouts while 265 injured. 1853 persons arrested had a reward attached to them.

The highest numbers of encounters were reported in Meerut zone with 449 encounters. Followed by Agra zone with 210 encounters. Bareilly was third on the list with 196 encounters. The draconian National Security Act (NSA) has also been slapped against as many as 167 ‘criminals’

The Chief Minister had earlier said that the police will have full freedom to deal with rising crime rates in the state and asked criminals to either surrender or leave the state. In no time, ‘Operation Clean’ was launched.

Criticising state action, Samajwadi party spokesperson, Rajendra Chaudhary said, “CM Yogi had warned the criminals but instead, crime has risen in the state. This is just government propaganda to hide their failure to crime control. This is a smokescreen created by the BJP but on the contrary, the crime graph is rising. Law and order situation has gone out of the hand.”

As per NDTV, the team which ‘successfully’ executes such encounters is incentivised with an amount of Rs. 1 lakh. The new UP Police Chief, O.P. Singh said in an interview to Economic Times, “We are not trigger-happy people. Our approach to criminals is clear – surrender or get arrested. If you fire, we will fire in self-defence. This is a police crackdown.”

SOURCE: UP POLICE

The NCRB data released for 2016 indicated that highest number of crimes were committed in Uttar Pradesh and accounted for 9.5% of total IPC crime reported in the country with a consistent increase in rate of violence of crimes against women and murder. Having a bad record in crime does not bode well since the UP government is planning its first investors’ summit on February 21, 22 in Lucknow. What does the government do then? It flaunts the report card of being ‘hard on crime’ with the number of encounters rising exponentially compared to any other time in the past. This is a double edged sword. On one side the majority community can be appeased, as the proportion of persons from minority background and backward castes and classes killed is much more, on the other investors are happy on the ease of doing business.

The Ethics of ‘Encounter’ Killings

Some would argue, what is wrong in going hard on crime and criminals? Everything. Crimes originate in any geographical space as a result of growing inequality and structural issues. Delinquents are present in every society but merely those delinquents do not form the core of the crime scene of a place. Promoting a culture of encounters is tantamount to promoting a culture of lawlessness and unaccountability.

The term ‘encounter’ as a construct is itself problematic, suggesting as it does a specific type of police contact – a spontaneous, unplanned ‘shoot- out’ between the police and alleged criminals, in which the criminal is usually killed, with few or no police injuries (Human Rights Watch 2009). In legal terms this is, or these are, extra-judicial killings, killings without any observance of any due process. That they have received the kind of sanction within the force(s) and also among India’s middle class and chatterati is reflective of the values all around.

A research study (Belur 2007) found out that police officers usually perceived a social consensus supporting police use of deadly force to eliminate ‘criminals’ despite questions and counter-claims by activists, media and political opposition about their legality in some cases. Notably, the police remains immune from official, legal or public scrutiny in most cases. Though there is a ‘free press’ and a criminal justice system that demands accountability, explanation is required when the police uses such force, possibly with political and public approval. The same study explains the reasons for police violence, including sociological, structural, organizational and sub-cultural and individual and situational (Green and Ward 2004)

Ease of doing Business?

In this case, a tacit political approval and in fact an initiative by the Uttar Pradesh government has given a free hand to the police to go ahead with encounter killings. Here, we need to come back to the ‘ease of doing business.’ And more specifically, the Investors’ summit to be held in February. Most states, in the name of ease of doing business, usually eliminate the indigenous population by either displacing them almost entirely or by creating an environment of fear and terror. States like Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand deploy this tactic on a regular basis.

Following suit is the Government of Uttar Pradesh. The investors’ summit is scheduled to happen in February 21, 22, 2018. To this end, Chief Minister Yogi already met the likes of Mukesh Ambani (Reliance group), Ratan Tata (Tata Group), Subhash Chandra (Essel), Ashok Hinduja (Hinduja Group), Shekhar Bajaj, Arvind Lalbhai (Arvind Mills), Sudhir Mehta (Torrent), Madhusudan Agrawal (Ajanta Pharma), N Chandrashekharan (Tata Sons) Pawan Goenka (Mahendra&Mahendra), Deepak Parekh (HDFC) etc in December 2017. It is important for the UP government that it appears ‘hassle-free’ when investors think of setting up big corporations in the state.

In countries like India, where encounters have the public sanction of the media and common people, as the ‘police is supposed to exert force’, to hear the news of encounter is not uncommon at all. However, their frequency in UP is alarming to say the least. It seems hardly likely, as the police forces have been claiming, that all these encounters took place in self-defence. It also seems unlikely that after featuring in the top charts of crime records for years, the state of UP has suddenly woken up to the spate of crimes taking place. Also, it goes without saying that any state seriously concerned about curbing the rate of crime, won’t itself mindlessly indulge in encounters and shoot-outs rather than looking at more reformative and liberating modes of engagement with criminals. But the UP state is unlike any other. Here encounters are being shown as a sign of progress. Any society in a correct human rights and democratic framework would have seen it as shameful that in order to control crime they have to resort to killing their own. And most importantly, killing those who were yet to be proven guilty.

To borrow from Reiner, Indian citizens almost fetishise the police- the idea that police is indispensable in the absence of meaningful public discourse.

New Delhi: One in four children in India’s most populous cities was malnourished, and mother’s education, feeding patterns and government service delivery determine child nutrition in addition to household wealth, according to a new report.

Even as India becomes highly urbanised, 22.3% of children under five were stunted, 21.4% were underweight and 13.9% were wasted in ten most populous cities of India, showed the Urban HUNGaMA (hunger and malnutrition) Survey report 2014, released on February 7, 2018, by Naandi Foundation, a Hyderabad-based non-profit.

While children in the highest stratum of household wealth were less prone to being malnourished, children in the lower strata had higher rates of malnutrition, the survey showed.

The survey was conducted to assess the nutrition status of children aged 0-59 months living in the ten most populous cities of India where more than 12,000 mothers were interviewed and heights and weights of more than 14,000 children aged 0-59 months were measured.

Cities included in the survey were Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Surat, Pune and Jaipur. Together, they account for 5.3% of India’s population and 4.1% of the child population aged 0-71 months.

In the 10 cities surveyed, 94.4% of children were born in hospitals while 88.6% were weighed at birth and 37.1% of mothers had a cesarean delivery.

“Poor infant and young child feeding practices, compounded by the poor status of women, the prevalence of household poverty and lack of government service delivery centre seem to be three major drivers of stunting among urban children” said the report.

Prevalence of stunting and underweight in Indian cities was highest between the third and fourth year of life, data show.

As many as 14.7% children aged 0-5 months were stunted, according to the survey.

Breast milk alone takes care of child’s nutrition in the first six months. The transition from breast milk to family foods known as complementary feeding is a vulnerable period. Only 1 in 10 Indian children gets “adequately fed”, IndiaSpendreported in May 2017.

Nearly 22.9% of children aged 12-17 months were stunted, and the prevalence rose to 25.7% among children aged 36-47 months. The rate dropped to 21.3% for children aged 48-59 months, data show.

Similarly, 17.3% children aged 0-5 months were underweight while the prevalence rose to 23.3% for children aged 48-59 months.

The prevalence of wasting remained fairly steady between 13% and 16% throughout the first five years of life, while prevalence of overweight remained between 1.7% and 3.6%.

Children of more educated mothers are less prone to malnutrition

Children of mothers with little or no schooling had higher prevalence of malnutrition, the survey showed.

The prevalence of stunting among children whose mothers had five or less years of schooling was 35.3%, compared to 16.7% among children whose mothers completed at least grade X.

Similarly, the prevalence of underweight among children whose mothers had five or less years of schooling was 33.1%, compared to 16.1% among children whose mothers completed at least grade X.

The prevalence of overweight was 3.2% among children whose mothers had five or less years of schooling, compared to 2.5% among children whose mothers completed 10 or more years of schooling.

A child born to a mother who can read is 50% more likely to survive past five years of age; each year of mother’s schooling decreases the probability of infant mortality by 5-10%, IndiaSpendreported in March 2017.

Poor service delivery worsens malnutrition

Only 37.4% of the households surveyed accessed a public distribution system outlet in the month preceding the survey–lowest in Surat (10.9%) and highest in Kolkata (86.6%).

As a result, less than one in four children (22.5%) was fed a diet that meets the minimum requirements for healthy growth and development, the survey showed.

Only 53.9% households had piped water in their homes, the survey showed. However, 91.1% of households in urban India have an ‘improved drinking water source’, according to National Family Health Survey, 2015-16 (NFHS-4).

The burden of drawing water for drinking often falls to women, leaving them with little time to focus on their health and education, studies (see here and here) show.

Only 44.7% of households surveyed had one woman member with a savings bank account, the survey showed. Women who independently use a bank account also have greater say in household decision-making, thereby improving maternal and child health, according to this August 2015 study.

As many as 61% urban Indian women had a savings account that they themselves used, according to NFHS-4.

More educated mothers = Lower prevalence of stunting: 16.7% children of mothers who completed 10 yrs of education were stunted, compared to 35.3% among those whose mothers had 5 yrs of schooling #HUNGaMA Survey (4/10)

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‘The most valuable personal sensitive information of present and future citizens has been made available to foreign data firms and governments and non-State actors for all time to come,’ says Gopal Krishna.
Illustration: Uttam Ghosh/Rediff.com

It is subverting the most important objective of the Constitution of India: Fostering equality of status and of opportunity and to promote among them all fraternity and assuring the dignity of the individual.

UID/Aadhaar is fostering biometric and digital exclusion and financial exclusion.

The numerous testimonies of victims of UID/Aadhaar in this regard are available in the public domain. The same has been submitted to the Supreme Court. It is structurally disempowering the common Indian through its assault on citizenship through biometric identification of residents.

Out of nearly 130 crore Indians, some 119 crore Indians and other residents of India have been made vulnerable to non-State actors, foreign States and their domestic collaborators because their most personal sensitive data, the world’s most valuable resource, has been parked with foreign data firms and governments through contract agreements between UIDAI and ungovernable technology companies like Accenture, Safran Group and Ernst & Young.

This information has come to light due to replies received under Right to Information Act.

There is no transparency about how much money these companies are making from the data assets of Indians to the detriment of India’s supreme interest.

This initiative of the world’s largest biometric-digital Central Identities Data Repository (CIDR) of UID/Aadhaar numbers has been bulldozed down people’s throats by Machiavellian deceit, coercion and breach of trust.

CIDR has dwarfed the stature of Indian citizens by exposing them and the coming generations to an unscientific experiment. It has turned Indians into guinea pigs for clinical trials in labs.

One needs to understand the disempowerment of a poor farmer, a serving soldier, a pensioner, a student, an old woman, a child and the family of Santoshi Kumari who have been deprived of their citizens’ entitlements because of CIDR.

With the oppressive linking of UID/Aadhaar of Indians, banks are exerting extraneous influence like money-lenders of old times.

The replies under the RTI Act have revealed that more than 99.99 percent Indians had pre-existing identity proof prior to the proposal of UID/Aadhaar.

It is apparent that it was a lame excuse to pursue this project whose total estimated budget has not been disclosed even after nine years of UIDAI’s existence.

It is ridiculous to claim savings without disclosing the total cost of the project. The replies under RTI Act have shown that this project is a ‘guaranteed revenue flow’ for foreign and domestic private firms, which tantamount to squandering taxpayers’ money.

In fact, in an unbelievingly strange situation, Indians are being made to part with their most valuable resource to these companies and they are also being made to pay for it at the rate of Rs 2.75/per enrolment and for each de-duplication forever.

In an exercise of irrationality of the worst order, value of digital transactions using UID/Aadhaar is being presented as savings due to the project.

All such claims of savings are an exercise in puffery. It has come to light and has been admitted that the World Bank study that refers to ‘savings’ from the project is based on a flawed footnote in its study.

Isn’t such propaganda and misinformation campaign a cause of gnawing worry?

The most valuable personal sensitive information of present and future citizens has been made available to foreign data firms and governments and non-State actors for all time to come.

It is a cause of grave worry. In the face of documentary proof, the government’s assurances ring as hollow as their words of consolation after every institutional disaster.

The CIDR of the UID/Aadhaar project continued without legislative approval from January 28, 2009, till September 12, 2016, without any backing of a parliamentary law even after the arrival of the BJP-led government in May 2014.

The first thing this government did was to act contrary to the democratic mandate against the UID/Aadhaar project. The Narendra D Modi-led alliance won an electoral victory by promising to scrap the biometric ID project.

Barack Obama and David Cameron too had made a similar promise. Both fulfilled their electoral promise of abandoning the biometric ID project of their predecessors, but Modi has gone against his own promise and betrayed the electoral mandate.

The cover of a Money Bill with which UID/Aadhaar was draped stood exposed and uncovered in the Rajya Sabha.

Notably, the Aadhaar Act came into force after more than 100 crore residents of India have been made naked without the protection of any legislative cover.

The European Union regulation on data privacy defines ‘profiling’ as any form of automated processing of personal data consisting of the use of personal data to evaluate certain personal aspects relating to a natural person, in particular to analyse or predict aspects concerning that natural person’s performance at work, economic situation, health, personal preferences, interests, reliability, behaviour, location or movements.

Such profiling can result in discrimination based on religion, ethnicity and caste. This has been noted in the Supreme Court’s verdict on the Right to Privacy, which dismissed the government’s submissions in this regard.

It is bizarre to witness the spectacle of the minister in charge of UIDAI paying insincere obeisance to the Supreme Court’s verdict on the Right to Privacy, but continuing to parrot arguments which have been rejected and buried by the Court.

The minister contends that because citizens have shared their details with official agencies on social media, smart phones etc on different occasions without any objection, they should not raise ‘serious objections relating to identity verification’.

The Court’s verdict reads: ‘If the individual permits someone to enter the house it does not mean that others can enter the house’, implying that if information has been shared with one entity it does not create any compelling legal logic to share it with other entities too.

It further observed, ‘… if the posting on social media Web sites is meant only for a certain audience, which is possible as per tools available, then it cannot be said that all and sundry in public have a right to somehow access that information and make use of it’.

Rejecting the government’s proposition, the Court’s observation reads: ‘Users of wearable devices and social media networks may not conceive of themselves as having volunteered data, but their activities of use and engagement result in the generation of vast amounts of data about individual lifestyles, choices and preferences’.

The Court’s verdict cites Yvonne McDermott’s paper, Conceptualizing the right to data protection in an era of Big Data, that speaks about the quantified self.

The paper underlines that ‘The rise in the so-called ‘quantified self’, or the self-tracking of biological, environmental, physical, or behavioural information through tracking devices, Internet-of-things devices, social network data and other means may result in information being gathered not just about the individual user, but about people around them as well.’

‘Thus, a solely consent-based model does not entirely ensure the protection of one’s data, especially when data collected for one purpose can be repurposed for another.’

It is abundantly clear that the minister’s argument has not been found acceptable by the Court because it is not rational to argue that just because someone has opened the windows of his house it does not create any sane logic to contend that he must open the doors of his house as well.

Giving one’s digital arm for a handshake does not create any reasonable compulsion to surrender one’s vital personal sensitive assets to UIDAI whose umbilical cord is linked to foreign firms and governments who have grabbed the citizens’ database.

Under the garb of ‘innovation’ in the digital economy, the privacy of future Presidents, prime ministers, legislators, judges, soldiers, intelligence personnel besides citizens cannot be allowed to be killed and allow national security to be compromised for good.

By the government’s own admission in the Supreme Court, it is clear that as far as UID/Aadhaar is concerned the proposed safety valves like virtual ID etc and the Data Protection Law Framework Committee’s report after nine years of UIDAI’s existence are stale, dated. cheques.

UID/Aadhaar creates a biometric-digital identity that subordinates the citizens’ identity and makes her/him a subject and a modern-day slave.

It takes away the right of an individual to exercise control over his personal data and to be able to control her/his own life including his right to control his existence on the Internet.

This project provides the structural technique by which every person is being profiled to the nth extent for all and sundry to know using both demographic and biometric information.

As per the Aadhaar Act, UIDAI is empowered to collect voice samples and DNA profiles as well which will consequent into promotion of genetic determinism and biometric casteism akin to Eugenic thinking. Coincidentally, the official forms for collecting DNA profiles seek details about caste too.

The manifesto of biometric identification promoters will read like the 1,500 page regressive manifesto titled ‘2083: A European Declaration of Independence’ brought out by the Norwegian gunman and neo-crusader, Anders Behring Breivik, who carried out the heinous attacks on his fellow citizens.

It refers to the word ‘identity’ over 100 times, ‘unique’ over 40 times and ‘identification’ over 10 times.

There is reference to ‘State-issued identity cards’, ‘converts’ identity cards’, ‘identification card’, ‘fingerprints’, ‘DNA’ etc as well in this manifesto.

Biometric profiling of any sort is dehumanising.

These words and their imports merit attention in order to safeguard the natural rights of present and future generation of citizens which faces an unprecedented onslaught from unregulated and ungovernable biometric and digital technology vendors.

The abandonment of UID/Aadhaar like ID projects in countries like the US, the UK, Australia, China, France and Germany and their failure in African countries create a logical compulsion for India to heed the decision of these countries.

The chips are no longer down for us women. Our leaders — from government to corporate — have finally paid attention to the need for gender equality. What else could explain the Economic Survey bearing a pink cover purportedly to underline the importance of ‘gender issues’? And to follow this ‘progressive’ gesture, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi announced that women can now have ‘Lady Doritos’ and other “lady snacks” that don’t make a crunching sound when munched. Well, of course, women should be seen and not heard.

Few sights are as disconcerting as that of chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian holding up a baby pink Economic Survey report while beaming into the camera. Did no one inform the worthies at the ministry of finance that it isn’t very woke to be colour-stereotyping women in the 21st century?

Sadly, the Budget that followed the Survey forgot to underline this deep affection for women by the all-men team that put together the Finance Bill, 2018. Most beneficiaries of the Ujjwala scheme are unable to continue using gas cylinders as they can’t pay the monthly rent after the first installation.

The National Health Mission is yet to recognise ASHAs — Accredited Social Health Activists — as workers and still pay them much less than the legal minimum wage. The mission’s allocation has now been cut by ₹672 crore. The Mission for the Protection and Empowerment of Women — which includes the unused Nirbhaya Fund — has been assigned only ₹1,365 crore.

But at least the Survey cover was pink. That’s sweet.

Meanwhile, PepsiCo has a female CEO approving and announcing all their plans. So how can anything she says not be of deep import when it comes to gender parity? “As you watch young guys eat the chips… they lick their fingers… and they pour the little broken pieces into their mouth, because they don’t want to lose that taste,” Nooyi had said on a Freakonomics Radio podcast on January 31 (goo.gl/t6uxsn). “Women I think would love to do the same, but they don’t. They don’t like to crunch too loudly in public. And they don’t lick their fingers generously….”

By Monday, and after a social media faecal storm, PepsiCo responded by stating that “the reporting on a specific Doritos product for female consumers is inaccurate. We already have Doritos for women — they’re called Doritos, and they’re enjoyed by millions of people every day.” Even as the company declined to elaborate what Nooyi had meant by “snacks for women that can be designed and packaged differently”.

Maybe this is a convoluted way for politicians, economists and CEOs to ensure that the Second Sex stops demanding so much attention about that damned ‘equal playing field’. The chips are really down for women, when what we get in the name of gender equality is a Pretty in Pink Economic Survey and serious consumer researchabout non-crunchy chips that could be packaged in a pink satin purse to match baby pink chastity belts.